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What happened to Shania Paige isn’t just a human tragedy of immense proportion.

It’s an infuriating, terrifying and pathetic indictment of the hypocrisy we spout about mental illness in this province.

On the one hand, we like to think we’ve evolved — that we no longer view mental illness as a stigma. Then government cuts vital services for the most seriously mentally ill.

If they were slashing care for cancer patients, we’d be in an uproar.

But the seriously mentally ill fall through the cracks and end up in the reluctant arms of the corrections system, when they really need to be embraced by the health-care system.

They need hospitals, not jails.

We think we’ve opened up discussion about mental illness. Brave survivors have come forward and talked about their experiences.

The reality is our system drops the ball over and over dealing with people who suffer serious conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. On a human level, that’s understandable. Dealing with people who are seriously mentally ill can be difficult.

But Paige, 19, was seeking help from the very professionals whose job it is to help.

She was suicidal, so she sought help from a suicide prevention hotline.

What happened? She was banned from using the service and told her calls were “bogus.” Her problem was she didn’t kill herself.

She sought hospital help but was forced to leave and had her arm broken in three places.

Progressive Conservative critic Jeff Yurek says mental-health services have been “severely degraded” in this province over the past decade. Hospital budgets have been frozen.

“You’ve seen wait-lists increase because the availability of mental-health beds has drastically decreased,” Yurek said.

“This is a case of someone who’s in desperate need of medical services and can’t get them because they’re too sick.”

Yurek says there’s a gap and mentally ill people often end up in jail rather than hospital.

“Mental-health patients are put in solitary confinement. There’s no treatment and there are no supports,” he said.

He said it’s hypocritical of the government to participate in Bell Let’s Talk day to promote the message that people should seek help for mental-health issues when there aren’t enough services for them.

Did we learn nothing from the Ashley Smith case? Smith’s death in a solitary confinement cell in a Kitchener institution in 2007 prompted an examination of the treatment of mentally ill people in the justice system.

Mentally ill people who act out aren’t doing so because they want to be difficult or cause trouble. That’s what mental illness does.

Paige ended up in the criminal justice system because of a tussle over a bottle of hand sanitizer in hospital. It was a cry for help. She doesn’t need punishment. She needs treatment.

We pay lip service to talking about mental illness — until the road takes a rough turn. Then we resort to the old methods that have proven fatal.

It’s too late for Ashley Smith, but can’t we help Shania Paige? Can’t we stop her from dying in that same black hole?

If the answer is no, then shame on us all — and shame on our government for talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

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In response to a request for comment from Health Minister Eric Hoskins, a spokesman said this via e-mail:

“It is important to recognize that our government must keep working to address gaps that exist in our system, reduce incidents and minimize the number of individuals suffering from mental illness entering our criminal justice system,” Joshua McLarnon said.

“We have provided funding to support the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Provincial Health Services and Justice Co-ordinating Committee that will ... improve police and emergency room transitions (when patients are brought in by police and transferred to the care of hospital staff ...

“We also know the emergency room may not always be the best setting to address a mental health crisis, and it is important our government work towards building additional access points for support ... Just last year we invested over $810 million for community mental health care in the province that supported over 300 agencies, including funding for over 50 mobile mental health crisis units ... Timely access to care is also important which is why our government is providing $2.75 million to improve access to care and reduce wait times at our specialty psychiatric hospitals in Whitby, Toronto, Penetanguishene and Ottawa.”